While much of the world has been praying for peace and goodwill, the Middle East has witnessed more mayhem and murder.

During Christmas week, the south of the region witnessed further sabotage attacks on Yemen’s Marib oil pipeline. Also in Yemen, there was a deadly army shelling of a funeral tent that killed 10.

In Iraq, al-Qaida-linked militants claimed responsibility for an attack on a television station headquarters that killed five journalists, bringing to 12 the number of journalists killed in the country in the past three months; a roadside bomb struck the convoy of the country’s acting defense minister, wounding two guards, only days after five senior army officers and 10 other soldiers had been killed during an operation against militants in western Iraq’s restive Anbar province; in the Dora area of Baghdad, other attacks targets Christians celebrating Christmas; in the country’s major southern oil producing province of Basrah, the disgruntled governor threatened to shut in Iraq’s roughly 2.2 million b/d of crude exports via the Persian Gulf over a revenue-sharing dispute with Baghdad.